Polyketone polymers are semi-crystalline polymers which possess an attractive set of properties for a variety of applications. The utility of these polymers can be further broadened by selectively blending polyketone polymers with other materials which have complimentary property sets.
The mixing together of two or more polymers has attracted interest as a means of arriving at new property combinations without the need to synthesize novel structures. The most common polymer blends are immiscible. In most cases, when two polymers are mixed, the components tend to segregate into separate phases, forming a non-adhering, heterogeneous mixture that exhibits inferior overall properties. In many cases, the overall property set of an immiscible blend may be improved by the addition of a suitable compatibilizer, or an agent which increases the degree of interfacial adhesion within the blend.
Occasionally, polymer pairs will form miscible blends. The term miscible describes a mixture of two or more polymers that form a single-phase solution (solid or liquid) within the amorphous phase on a molecular scale. When one or both of the polymer blend components is capable of forming both a crystalline and an amorphous phase (i.e. a semi-crystalline polymer), then the term miscible refers only to the amorphous phase in which the separate components are capable of mixing on the molecular level. Miscibility is most readily indicated by a single, composition-dependent, glass transition temperature for a blend of two or more components.
It is an object of this invention to provide a miscible blend of a polyketone polymer and a second polymer.